Page 61 of Soul Bound

“We’re going to go get breakfast after this, so you can eat some real food.”

“Potatoesarereal food.” I stick a chip in my mouth and crunch happily on it. “The Irish would agree with me.”

Ranger rolls his eyes and loses his pants. I don’t get to appreciate his form for long because he closes his eyes and flexes his fingers. The sound of his bones cracking and moving fills the night air. In a matter of seconds, his tanned skin is replaced with lush gray and silver fur. I jump to my feet to greet the very large wolf that now stands in front of me.

I’m not sure what to do, so I put a tentative hand out to let him smell me before reaching out to touch him, but the beast has other ideas. His large head pushes into my hand, rubbing his face against me. A happy noise comes from him as he pushes forward to nuzzle my chest. I bring my other hand up and sink them into his shockingly soft coat. I scratch behind his ear, earning me a contented rumble.

His head lifts and he licks at my jaw. I scrunch my face up and use my sleeve to wipe the slobber off of me. “You’re an affectionate thing, aren’t you?”

He yips and bounces back, his head lowers and his tail wags behind me. I laugh. “I wish I had a tennis ball… wait.Canyou fetch?” A displeased noise answers my question, and I have to figure it’s Ranger who’s answering me. I’m sure he’s not a fan of me treating him like a golden retriever. “Don’t growl at me. It was just a question,” I huff.

He barks at me again, and this time I get the hint. He wants to play. Okay, I can do that.

I lunge to my left before making a quick turn and running off to my right. He runs after me, moving a lot faster than I can. I laugh as he bites gently at the sleeves of my hoodie, being overly careful to not actually bite my skin.

I dash between the trees with him right on my tail. I know he’s letting me get away from him and if he wanted to, he could take me down at any moment. I don’t know how long we run around the trees, but eventually, a rabbit in the distance catches his attention.

“Go get it,” I urge him.

He looks between me and the rabbit as if he isn’t sure he wants to leave me alone. “I’ll be right over there.” I point to where I had left our stuff. “Go have fun.”

He reaches up and licks my chin one more time before taking off after the small animal. I don’t stick around long enough to see if he catches it. I head back to where my laptop sits and flop down in the grass, slightly out of breath.

“Jesus, I need to work on my cardio.”

Ha! Yeah,right. I don’t even believe myself when I say it.

I open my laptop and go through all the sites and logins it takes for me to access Whisper’s secret message board. I type out a simple message.

Haunted33: Need help. Call me.

I know he has my phone number, so I just have to sit back and wait for the cell phone in my pocket to ring. I can’t see the gray wolf anymore, but I hear the sound of something moving around in the trees and I know it’s my wolf. I don’t know when I started thinking of him as my wolf, but I do.

It doesn’t take long for my phone to start buzzing in the front pocket of my hoodie. I pull it out and find a blocked number calling. I press the phone to my ear and smile when greeting my friend, “That was fast.”

“I don’t like to leave a lady waiting.” Whisper snickers. “What can I do for you, sugar?”

“Is this a secure line?” I don’t want to get him in trouble.

“Don’t insult me. Of course, it is. I also hacked into your phone and you’re now working permanently off the grid, it’s untraceable andunhackable—well unless it’s me doing the hacking, but you get what I mean.”

“Okay good. I need you to use the satellite imaging you have access to and look at something for me.”

“Vague,” he drawls. “But okay, when and where am I looking.”

I give him the date and roughly the time Ranger had provided me. Before leaving the tunnels, I had marked the coordinates on my phone, so I give those to him as well. “If we’re right, you should see a car or cars leave from there, using the logging back road that’s right there. I need you to tell me where those cars end up and if you can somehow find out who’s in those cars, their names and current locations would be great.” I’m crossing my fingers. I know we have the possible tracking spell, but we should be learning as much as we can about the people who disappeared with the baby—I mean,TBD.

“I can do that, might take me a little while though. What is this all about Winslow?”

“It’s a long story, but the short version is a friend’s baby was taken and we are trying to find her.” Not a lie, but also not the complete truth. “We know she was taken in those cars you’re tracking with the imaging; we’re hoping you can lead us to the men who have her.”

“Bywe, do you mean the hunky man you were with last time?”

“Yes.” I bite my bottom lip.

“I want more details onthatwhole situation, but we’ll deal with the missing baby first, seeing as it seems like a more pressing matter.” I hear him typing away on his keyboard. “I’ve got to ask though, and you know how I feel about cops, but why aren’t you having them deal with all of this?”

“They wouldn’t be able to help. I can’t tell you everything but trust me when I say it’s better you don’t know.”

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